M.G.Aune. “Review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, presented by the Pittsburgh Public Theater at the O’Reilly Theater, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 18 February 2010." Early Modern Literary Studies 15.2 (2010-11): 15.1-11 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/15-2/revppt.htm>

Celebrating its thirty-fifth season, the
Pittsburgh Public Theater presented a well-timed slapstick production of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream in the midst of the worst blizzard to hit
Pittsburgh in decades. When it comes to Shakespeare, comedies are the PPT’s
clear preference. Host for several years to the Reduced Shakespeare Company,
in 2007 artistic director Ted Pappas and designer James Noone teamed for a
well-received, production of Comedy of Errors that seemed like hybrid of
Plautus, Mack Sennet, and Chuck Jones. Where that production balanced physical
comedy, rich costumes, a large cast, and a sophisticated set to emphasize the
farcical humor, Pappas and Noone’s comparatively pared down Dream relied
on a spectacular backdrop, strong acting and directing to draw out the gender
conflict of the upper class Athenians and the low comedy of the Rude
Mechanicals.

The thrust stage of the
O’Reilly Theater was largely bare throughout the play. Its carpeted surface
featured a series of low tiers falling away toward the audience. The bare
stage and absence of props and sets allowed the actors to move freely and
widely, adding tempo to the production. The backdrop began as a twenty-foot
high wall painted to resemble marble with gilt details and two pairs of doors
representing Theseus’ palace. A turntable between the doors rotated the center
part of the wall transforming it into Titania’s flowery bower.

Once the
Athenians entered the forest, the top half of the backdrop rose into the flies
revealing trees and bushes and an enormous moon. Leaves fell and littered the
stage. As the play progressed, the moon moved across the back of the stage
from audience left to right and its color changed from cool blue to bright red
in the presence of conflict, such as Titania and Oberon’s initial conflict and
Lysander and Demetrius’ battle over Helena. A third color became apparent as
the couples reconciled. When Oberon and Titania were “new in amity” the moon
became, like love-in-idleness, “purple with love's wound,” combining the red and
the blue.

The costumes contributed to
characterization and gender conflict. Theseus wore a crown of golden laurel
leaves, a red military jacket with gold braids, white trousers and black riding
boots and appearing as a British officer. Hippolyta appeared Grecian in a
flowing, pale blue gown that reached the floor. The rest of the Athenians
confirmed a roughly nineteenth-century setting, the men wearing suits with
waistcoats and ties. The women wore empire-waist dresses with matching ribbons
in their hair -- Hermia in pink and Helena in soft green. Demetrius and
Lysander wore tones that matched the woman each marry at the play’s end. The
Rude Mechanicals’ clothes were similar to the aristocrats, but frayed, worn,
and sometimes mismatched to convey their lesser status.

The fairies were costumed
eclectically and added to the comedy. Like Theseus, Oberon wore a crown of
real laurel leaves rather than golden. His loose silk trousers were black and
his flowing cloak was black with red details. Bare-chested, he looked like a
deity who had just risen from bed. Hippolyta’s crown was taller and made of
silvery twigs. She too looked comfortable in a glittery pale blue floor-length
skirt and matching top, which left her midriff bare. A black diaphanous robe
added a slightly menacing element. Puck was sinister, with a thick brown head
of hair that stood on end and nearly covered his horns. He was also
bare-chested, and wore brown tights and boots and had a leather collar and
armbands, making him look like a professional wrestler. The minor fairies had
vaguely clownish appearances. The first fairy was costumed incongruously as
Pierrot. Mustardseed wore a loose yellow tunic that gathered at the wrists and
knees and featured large brown spots. The rest of the fairies coordinated
using color variations to match their names.

The production seems to have
taken as its cue the opening exchange between Theseus and Hippolyta. Whalen’s
Theseus anxiously told Hippolyta of his desire for her and Amato’s Hippolyta replied
curtly and distantly. This Amazonian Queen was not pleased to have been woo’d
by Theseus’ sword and refused to come within an arm’s length of him. Theseus
himself, despite his apparent prowess on the battlefield, did not seem sure how
to engage his fiancée in peacetime. Though she had no lines once Egeus and the
young Athenians entered, Amato clearly communicated Hippolyta’s displeasure
with the situation by pacing angrily back and forth upstage while Theseus
attempted to solve the problem. His decision to support Egeus did not satisfy
and Hippolyta stormed off stage. The tension continued in the forest, where
the doubled Titania and Oberon unambiguously echoed the unstated tension
between Theseus and Hippolyta. Their visible anger with each other and the
accompanying lighting effects made Puck and the other fairies search for cover.

The production worked hard to
use humor to alleviate this tension. Lysander and Hermia, already in matching
costumes, were chastely smitten with each other. When they separated to
prepare to elope, rather than kiss on the lips, they kissed their hands and
then touched palms while looking coyly away. Bottom and his fellow craftsmen
flirted with overacting as they distracted the audience with their preparation
and vanity at their acting ability. These moments consistently drew laughter
and applause from the audience.

With many productions of Dream,
Helena and Demetrius’ exchange in 2.1 provides a test of sensitivity to the
play’s gender politics. Here, Pappas softened the gender clash with a
ridiculously smitten and maniacally driven Helena. In striving to alleviate
the potential discomfort of her degradation before Demetrius, Helena overplayed
her “use me but as your spaniel” lines to the point of slapstick. As she spoke
these lines, she dropped to the floor, grabbed Demetrius’ hand, and rubbed it
on her face. Apparently oblivious to the humiliation, audience laughed
loudly. To even the score, later in the scene and under the influence of
love-in-idleness, Lysander and Demetrius both groveled before Helena and
nuzzled her hands. Predictably, the moment also elicited strong laughter. In
a purely structural sense, this evened out the humiliation visited on Helena,
but it could not obviate the play’s persistent patriarchal nature.

While Titania and Hippolyta
were distinctly strong-willed and resistant to their male counterparts, the
text requires them eventually to submit. Pappas’ production rushed these
transitions. Oberon’s speech describing Titania’s change of heart was
truncated. More jarring, the production cut the last half of 4.1 when
Hippolyta and Theseus discover the lovers and come to some measure of concord.
These edits were presumably made for time and any disorientation was quickly
forgotten when Pyramus and Thisbe began. In retrospect, however, their
omission sabotaged the production’s attempt to establish and then resolve a
conflict between the genders. For all its effort, the play still had the women
acceding to the men with very little explanation as to why.

The production’s conclusion was
trademark PPT comedy. If the Rude Mechanicals were overconfident in their
initial appearance, they were pompous in performance. Added to the text’s puns
and double-entendres were a stream of sight gags and missteps. Ahlin’s Bottom
stole the show by committing suicide in at least ten different ways. Beginning
with a conventional sword-under-the-arm thrust, he paused for a beat, and still
standing, mimed severing his limbs. When this did not satisfy Bottom’s need
for drama, he poured poison into his ear, strangled himself, and put an asp to
his chest. Still on his feet, he pulled out an imaginary rope and hanged
himself, and then turned to a classical standby and pulled out his eyes and
held them at arm’s length while he staggered across the stage. Apparently
interpreting the Athenians’ shock at his performance as awe, Bottom stepped
forward, yanked a pillow out from under Hermia, and suffocating himself,
finally slumping to the floor face down. But even in death Bottom ruled the
stage as he was too heavy for his colleagues to roll over and so as they
futilely pushed and pulled at his corpse, the Athenians continued with their
lines.

Several audience members were
laughing so hard tears streamed down their faces. And so, though the
production continued for another five minutes, for the audience it ended with
Bottom’s demise. As Pappas had done with earlier Shakespeare comedies, he
deployed solid acting and directing, along with a generous measure of clever
stage business to bring out the comedy. In so doing, he let it overwhelm any
potentially uncomfortable questions of misogyny or patriarchy. Rather than
confront the gender conflict directly, as the opening scene suggested, the
production foregrounded the humor. A decision that was, if disappointing, very
entertaining based on the audience reaction. The production also acknowledged
the experienced Shakespeare fan, especially in Bottom’s death where, as the
some in the audience noticed, his suicides were nearly all derived from other
Shakespeare plays.

Responses to this piece intended for the
Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editor at M.Steggle@shu.ac.uk.